6 Ways To Make Money Online With An Affiliate Internet Business

If you want to be involved in internet marketing, affiliate marketing, making money online, building as affiliate internet business online, etc., then I would suggest that you read this article by Marlon Sanders.

After you have read it several times, read it again and note that he says it is not easy, it will require that you work, and it will require that you learn marketing, it will require that you not give up. But he also says you can do it.

This is an introduction to building an online business and like building any business it will take action on your part. This is a long article and so your very first action will be to read it. Will you read this and then start taking action to build your affiliate internet business online?

Again, I encourage you to take action and read (not skim) this article by Marlon Sanders.

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How To Escape Your Day Job, Pay Your Bills And Make Progress
Towards The Ideal Internet Lifestyle

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 By Marlon Sanders

 There are 6 basic ways to get dough online:

 1. Promote affiliate products
 2. Google adsense
 3. Sell a service
 4. Sell advertising
 5. Sell physical products (think ebay)
 6. Sell information

You’ll notice that the last 4 all involve selling something. That’s the approach I wanna talk to you about today.

I did a survey with my Milcers and Alist members. I found out that most of them are still stuck to a degree in getting things going.

I want to give you an abbreviated action plan that I spend 100 pages elaborating on in “ Gimme My Money Now ” and that the icons walk you through in “ The Marketing Dashboard “.

There are MANY Formulas out there. Here’s the Marlon Sanders Formula in a nutshell. So many of you have written and said, “I need a Formula. I need step-by-step.” This is the big picture:

1. Find demand
2. Write sales letter
3. Create info product to meet demand
4. Roll out with affiliate program

That whole formula is elaborated on in much greater depth in both Amazing Formula and Gimme My Money Now .

Here’s what I found out from my survey. Most of you guys and gals have jobs that you want to escape from. You have bills and debts to pay.

And most of you are coming into this without a lot of prior knowledge of marketing and some of you have limited computer skills.
Based on that, do you think it’s safe for me to say it’s unrealistic to think you’re going to quickly and easily become a zillionaire?

Well, it’s true. If you have no  background in sales and marketing, and you don’t have very good computer skills, you have a learning curve ahead of you and that takes time.

HERE’S HOW I PERSONALLY DID IT

I remember when I was broke and bought deodorant with all pennies. But what I did was kept learning and didn’t expect easy nor overnight results.

I kept buying books when I could afford them. There were no cheap and easy ebooks back then. I could have done it 10 times faster if I had access to all the information available today.

Anyway, my way out was self education. And action. I kept doing little projects to put what I learned into ACTION.

I ran this one little business where you sold booklets using answering machines. You didn’t have voice mail then. So I had 3 answering machines hooked up in my home (my friends hated it).

I ran these little ads in what we call in the U.S. “penny shoppers.” These are little papers given away for free that are all classified ads.

I ended up running ads in 72 cities! And people would leave their name and address on the answering machines. I shipped the books C.O.D. Half the books came back. It was sorta like paying out 50% affiliate commissions.

You didn’t have Paypal or easy merchant accounts in those days. So you had to do C.O.D. I sold $12,000 of books via “mail order.” And I was exhilerated to do so. I think at the end of the day I probably LOST money.

But I sure learned a lot.

 
Then AOL and CompuServe came along and I started writing sales letters and running ads on there. You’d run a little classified ad (they were free on AOL). People would email you.

Since autoresponders didn’t exist, you’d personally email them back your “free report.” Since there weren’t any PDF’s then (at least, that I knew of), the free report was a long email.

The “big trick” my friend Jonathan Mizel taught back then was to put their name in the return email! That was a big secret back then.
Mizel, me, others all learned copywriting from Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples. That was like one of 4 or 5 books on copywriting. But you know what? We wrote some pretty good sales letters back then. I first met Jonathan Mizel ’cause he sent me one of his sales letters, and I thought it was good. So I wrote and asked him where he learned to write copy.

Of course, he said “Tested Advertising Methods” by John Caples. So we were immediate friends.

AOL was great. You could test out your little ads, emails and sales letters. I don’t even think in those days we sent out follow up emails.

As far as I know, my friend the late Corey Rudl created the demand for autoresponders when he wrote about how he brought in all this money by automatically emailing buyers 4 days later.

It was only after that someone was smart enough to create an autoresponder. Corey’s stuff was hand coded. Gosh, I miss Corey. And I reckon you’ve been in this business a long time when you see your friends move on to the next great adventure.

 
Somewhere in this timeline (it all escapes me), I had a little retail store selling self help books and tapes. The first thing newbies think to sell online is either diet stuff or self help.

Man, self help is a tough sell. Both Dan Kennedy and I had self development stores. And we both lost bux on ‘em. But I did have the chance to write and send out a few sales letters. And since I often didn’t have the money to print and mail letters, I’d call ‘em on the phone.

I found out that just by calling people, I could say ANYTHING and I’d STILL get a lot of people coming in for the next 3 weeks.

That’s the power of staying in contact with your customers.

Anyway, I could go on with this story. I’ve told the rest of it in bits and pieces in different places.

 
What are you supposed to get out of this?

Dan Kennedy I think had a path kinda like mine. And what he said once is profound. He said, “I became an overnight success after 20 years of effort.”

Now, I’m NOT saying you need 20 years of effort. You don’t. But neither is 20 minutes a week gonna do much for ya.

Most of the people I’ve seen make it in this business do so after trying things that didn’t work. And they kept on trying. And sooner or later, somethin’ clicked.

I think I shoulda called this article, “Sooner or Later, Something Clicked.”

So you got a job that sucks. You got bills that are stacked up. Hopefully you can buy deodorant with something other than pennies like me in the old days.

 
So what do YOU do?

My friend, I’d personally tell ya to do what I did. Fall in love with the process more than the immediate fixation of “I gotta make this work now or the whole thing is a scam.”

What you’re learning is marketing.

And that’ll benefit you your whole life. It can help you get your son or daughter or friend a job. It can help you raise money for your Church or charity. It can help you promote an idea whose time has come.

See, a LOT of people say, “I feel like I’ve just wasted my #*$&* money on stuff.”

I my response is, “Then you don’t understand what you’re learning. No wonder things haven’t clicked for you yet.”

See, this isn’t about gimmicks. It isn’t about you figuring out how to trick people into buying with magic words. It isn’t about fooling the search engines into stickin’ your stuff at the top. If you do this business the way I teach it, it’s about learning marketing. And yeah, I said the dirty 5-letter word — LEARN. You can paint it up. You can put perfume on it. You can sell the sizzle not the steak.

But my friend, what you’re doin’ is learning. And like my friend Jim Edwards says, “That isn’t something you microwave.”
“So Marlon, tell me how long this is gonna take and how much I’m gonna make when I’m done?”

Rule 1: People learn at different rates, so no one knows.
Rule 2: You’ll never be done.
Rule 3: It depends on what you sell, who you sell to, how much you charge, what your margin is and how often they buy.

Some people like Russ Brunson get in this business, do it part time between classes in college and go great guns with it. Russ was one of my top affiliates. But he figured out this business so quickly, before I knew it he had his own line of highly successful products. More power to him!

Others are like me and take like 10 or 20 years to learn it. What’s average? Average is not doing anything, therefore not learning anything, therefore the bills pile higher and the job gets tougher.

“Well, if you can’t tell me how much I’m gonna make, how long it’s gonna take and how much it’s gonna cost me, then I think this whole thing is a scam.”

To say that is to say you believe marketing is a scam. Because at least the way I teach it, that’s what you’re learning.

 
What’s my advice?

Think of the best info product idea you know how to come up with. Interview some experts and record it. Or have a friend interview you. Do a little 3-hour product, write a sales letter for it. And see if anyone buys.

If they don’t buy, guess what? You asked the market a question and the market answered.

You asked the market, “Do you want to buy this?” And the market responded, “No, not in the way you’re presenting it to me.”

Your choice is to present it differently or do another product. Along the way hopefully you learn some things about how to find out what people want, how to get ‘em to buy, how to fulfill products, write letters, create sales pages and so forth.

Honestly, in the DOING, you’ll learn a lot more than you’ll ever learn in the reading. You ask. The market answers. You learn along the way.

 
But if you’re a spectator and you never get in the game, I can guarantee you one rock solid thing: You’ll never win the game if you aren’t in it.

This is a great business. It isn’t for everyone. It sure isn’t a way to become a zillionaire overnight. Maybe after 5, 10 or 20 years you hit that zillion and you’re the next John Reese or Jeff Walker.

 
I don’t think everyone should be in this business. If you don’t wanna figure anything out yourself, if you don’t wanna learn how to solve problems, if you don’t wanna learn more things about html and the computer than you really wanna know, if you can’t tolerate risk, if you need your first attempt to be a success, or even your first 3 or 4, then I don’t know, if you can’t afford to spend money on learning and education, if you can’t afford to try things that don’t work, if you think it should all be simple and easy, I don’t know if this industry is for you.

A lot of people get seduced by the lure of ez dough. The promises of zillions without learning. Just connect the dots and you too can be John Reese, Marlon Sanders or whoever you wanna choose.
Here’s the deal: People WILL sell you a turnkey system to escape your job, make zillions or whatever. They’ll give you the fish. I want to teach you TO FISH.

I have a strong belief that unless you buy a franchise, in most cases your going to better off learning marketing than “buying a fish.” There are exceptions. But more often than not, buying a fish doesn’t serve you well.

Some of my friends would disagree with that premise. I happen to have a strong conviction that you are better off learning marketing. My friends are RIGHT in that people DO want to buy the fish versus learn how to catch it. So oftentimes, you’re best off selling a “fish” product.

But everybody has their perspectives. And for me, my criteria for buying a product: If whatever “IT” is doesn’t “pan out” for you, are you STILL better off from having pent money on it? Will it continue to benefit you, your family or your friends in the future?

If the answer is NO, then think twice before spending your money.

You have a job you wanna escape, bills to pay off, retirement to prepare for. Or special needs like a sick loved one. Or a sickness yourself.

I can’t promise you ez zillions. There’s no integrity in that.

I can’t promise you 6 figures a year ez as pie.

What I CAN promise you is that selling products works. It’s no scam. People been doin’ it for thousands of years.

I can promise you that marketing works. Always has. Always will.

I can promise you that money and time spent learning marketing can pay off in many ways.

I can promise you that if you find demand, meet it with products and well-executed promotions, and you do that over time, those bills will likely fade away.

I can promise you that everybody on the Net selling you this or that “dough making system” ALL have 1 thing in common — THEY are selling you a product, service or seminar.

They have a target market.
They have an intro offer.
They have a back end.

I believe in paying more attention to what people DO than what they SAY.

People get all confused what to DO. And there’s a new system invented every day that’s the next big thing. Thank God. I love commerce.

But to remove the confusion, understand this:

They all may disagree on HOW you make money. But one thing is certain: They’re making bux selling a product to a target market — YOU!

Go and do thou likewise.

I remember back then. When I bought deodorant with all pennies.

I remember the date I had with a model in a car that smoked like a bomb.

And to me, there’s no confusion. It’s all crystal. It’s all simple. Take away the smoke. Take away the mirrors.
 

You need a product. You need people who want it with the money to buy it. You need some great promo out there.

There’s only ONE method people having using to pay their bills and quit their jobs for the past 1,000 years –

Selling products and services to a target market with a great sales pitch that presents benefits and solves problems.

I know you want more details on how. How do you find target markets? How do you identify demand? How, how, how.

I have provided a lot of those answers in the Milcer’s newsletters, Amazing Formula, Gimme My Money Now , and Action Grid.

You wanna quit that job? You wanna liquidate that debt? I don’t have an ez zillion for you. But I do have a crystal clear answer.

Find a group of people. Find out what they need and want. Meet those wants with a product. Provide great service.

And who knows. Maybe. Someday. If the stars shine down on you, you’ll hit that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 
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Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy.” If you’d like to get on his mailing list and receive tips, articles and information about online marketing, visit: http://www.marlonsnews.com

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REPRINT RIGHTS: You have permission to use the above article without omission and including the resource box. You have the right to insert your reseller URL for “Amazing Formula” in place of the existing URL.

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Did you notice the section above that starts with “I don’t think everyone should be in this business…” Read it and this article again.

Now if you are ready, get ready to start building you affiliate internet business onlie. There’s a lot to do and a lot to learn. The purpose of this blog is to bring together many sources of info and guidance for your success.

Some of the posts will be mine; some of the products will be mine. But like this post, I will bring you informative and useful information from other internet marketing experts also. Stay tuned and make it a practice to visit and comment here on a regular basis.

To Your Online Success,
Lonnie Minton

Technorati Tags: affiliate internet business online, affiliate marketing, building an online business, internet marketing, making money online, Marlon Sanders, promote affiliate products

7 Key Things That Your Squeeze Page Should Have

In my last post in this series I told you about the tools that you will need for affiliate marketing success. One of the reasons that you obtained the tools was so that you could build your list – a key to your online success. There is an additional thing that you need to do before you start using the tools.

You need to create or obtain something that you can giveaway – an ebook, some software, an ecourse, etc. An excellent source of free ebooks is Viral Ebook Explosion Once you have a giveaway product, you need to build a squeeze page.

This is simply a tool to help you get the name and email address of prospective buyers. It is also called an opt-in page because its primary purpose is to get people to opt into your list as a subscriber.

One of the tools I mentioned was a program to build web pages. If you know HTML, you are set to go. If not I recommended CoffeeCup HTML Editor. This is a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to build web pages without knowing much HTML.

That’s what your squeeze page will be – just a website that you put on the internet for people to visit, but it is a powerful tool for your list building efforts.

There are many things that you could build into your squeeze page, and just having a squeeze page on the web is not all that you need in order to get your list started. In later post I will look at some of the other things that you will need to put into place, including some additional web pages.

For now, let’s look at 7 things your squeeze must have.

1. Only one action.

As I have already stated you want to get the name of email address of your visitors. So don’t make any other options available. Of course they can always leave your web page. However, your task is to convince them to fill out the opt-in form that you have placed on the page.

2. The opt-in form.

This is a form that provides a place for your visitor to enter their name and email address. Then behind the scene, action takes place, via your autoresponder, to add then to your list. Preferably, this form will be visible without the visitor having to scroll down the page: i.e., above the fold as it is known.

3. Brevity.

You don’t want an excessive amount of information on this web page. Just put enough information here to get your message across and convince the reader that he needs to add your free offer to his arsenal of internet marketing information/tools.

4. Make the fact that your offer is free standout.

Tell the visitor how the information available in the free item will help him in his efforts. Emphasize the benefits and that these benefits are free by filling out the opt-in form.  Show him what he can expect to gain if he takes this action.

5. No spam.

In a perfect world this step would not be necessary. But…

Somewhere close to your opt-in form, you need to inform your visitors that you will never spam. In addition, you will not sell or giveaway their contact information. This must be a fact that you never violate.

6. High quality content.

Since you are asking your visitors to become subscribers, you need to let them know that you will provide good quality content and that you will only recommend quality products.

7. Identify yourself.

You can do this by including your name on the page. Other options are your signature, your picture, etc. Something that they can connect with to know that you are a real person.

Now, there are other aspects of a good squeeze page. You could add video, audio, etc.

The important thing to note is that building this squeeze page is essential to your affiliate marketing success. If you don’t have it already get a copy of my free ebook: The Squeeze Page – A List Building Tool and get start today.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, HTML Editor, list building, Opt-In Form, squeeze page

Skyrocket Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts With Private Label Rights

Have you noticed how Private Label Rights (PLR) products of all types have become a major emphasis in the affiliate marketing arena? This post will highlight some of the reasons that this has happened.

Obtain a private label rights product and it’s yours. You can turn it into your own product or you can use it as content whenever you are in need of good content – like posts on your blog or as a part of you newsletter. The applications are endless. Maybe you want to create a new ebook to giveaway on your squeeze page.

The beauty of this is that you get the content and you save a lot of your time by not having to create the content yourself.

Part of this post will be dedicated to showing you how to use your private label rights content in your affiliate marketing endeavors. Used right it can be a big explosion to your efforts.

Your first affiliate marketing step should be to concentrate on building a list of subscribers. So, how will PLR help you in this very essential project?

It’s simple, use some of you private label rights content to develop an ebook or ecourse. Construct a squeeze page and give away your ebook or ecourse as an enticement in exchange for people’s name and email address. By using an autoresponder you will build a list of subscribers – a list of potential customers.

A second method is to use private label rights videos. This is a powerful marketing tool and the conversion rate is relatively high. Currently videos are very popular in the internet marketing world.

Marketing Note: Liz Tomey has just released a huge package of private label rights products that include video workshops, video product, video reviews and so much more. This package will greatly enhance your affiliate marketing and the package include personal coaching from Liz. It is available here.

Some have said that list building provides you with a license to print money or you may have heard it expressed as. “The Money Is In The List”. However you have heard it, just do it.

After you have you list in place, regardless of how small or large it may be, you start building relationships with your subscribers but you also find a product in your niche and you start sending your subscriber emails about your product. Some will buy and you will start making money online.

Here are a few other things that you can start doing: Add bonuses for those that buy products by using your links: write product reviews and send the review to your list. Also post the reviews on your blog.

Step-by-step recap:

First, create a squeeze page where you give something away so that you can build you list. Use you new PLR information for your free gift.

Second, review a product or create some sort of message about a product that you can send to your list. Include links to the product that you are trying to sale. Put several of these types of messages in your autoresponder so that they so out automatically to each person on your list.

I mentioned Liz Tomey’s package above. In this package, called “Tax Man PLR Blowout package”, she gives you 25 video reviews of 25 different products that you can send to your list. You can get these by clicking here.

Third, using the product you found in the second step or one that you develop, create a bonus that you can give to people when they buy through using your link. Let your list know about the bonus that you are offering. Again, use your autoresponder to insure that every person on your list or that joins your list in the future will automatically be made aware of you bonus offer.

Private Label Rights (PLR) products are a great source for the content that you need to create your bonus product. A great PLR content package exists here.

Fourth, use PLR content to build your product(s). As before let your list know where they can get your product. Of course, you will use your autoresponder to automate the process.

Fifth, do it all over again, then again…

Soon you will have a system that works on autopilot. Each time you do the above, it just keeps working while you go about repeating the process and workong on ways to drive traffic to your squeeze pages.

There are still details to work out, but you now have an outline of the complete process of using private label rights content to enhance your affiliate marketing endeavors online.

I recommend Liz Tomey’s Tax Man PLR Blowout as a great source for taking the above steps.

This package includes PLR to video reviews, entire workshop and coaching programs, products, and more that are ALL created by Liz Tomey personally. The coaching part of the package will show you exactly how you can use the content in your efforts.

Liz says that only 500 of these packages that will be sold, go here right now and start using Private Label Rights (PLR) products in your affiliate marketing success program.

To your online success,

Lonnie Minton

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing videos, business model newsletter, creating a product, list building, private label rights, squeeze page

List Building – What You Need to Get Started
 
In my last post I talked about list building and some of the benefits it brings to your affiliate marketing business. There are many reasons to be proactive with your list building.

But like anything else it requires tools. There are some things that you will have to have in place in order to get started with your list building. Until you have these essentials in place you will not be able to build a list of subscriber and customers.

Also like anything else you will need to make sure the details are taken care of and you will have to implement things – that means take action.

So, let’s look at the essentials – what you will have to have in order to get started.

Getting these things set up may be new and even boring for some. You may even think that working on these is an unproductive endeavor, but you need to get the work done. Production comes later.

For others, these tasks may be new. In that case you will have to learn WHAT they are as well as HOW to use them.

In either of these cases the matter still remains that you have to get them done. Why? Because, your internet marketing business depends on your list building efforts and list building depends on these tools.

Once you get these essentials in place you can continue on down the road of getting a large list of subscribes that you can communicate with and over time convert some of them to customers.

There are 4 tools that I consider as essential. Get them set up and you can start building your internet/affiliate marketing business:

1. You must purchase a domain name.

You will have to decide on a name for your online efforts. Once you have decided on a name and determined that the name is available on the internet, you will have to register the name. This is called purchasing a domain name.

It is considered by some to be a good idea to incorporate the theme of your website into your domain name. Some would say that you need to make sure that your domain name has keywords in it. Others would say that the most important thing is to keep it simple and make it easy to remember. You might start with www.yourname.com.

After you have selected your name, the URL you want to use, you need to register it with someone like GoDaddy or NameCheap.

2. Purchase hosting.

Now, that you have a domain name you need to get it visible on the web. This is the task of webhosting. There are many companies that offer this service. And there are many things to consider when looking for a hosting company.

Generally speaking it is not a good idea to register your domain and obtain hosting from the same company.
 
You should spend some time looking at the different packages that different companies offer. Determine your short term and long term needs and purchase the package that meets your current and projected needs. I would suggest that you insure that your package includes cPanel and Web Host Manager. This will provide you with the most control to create and modify your websites.

You should also pay attention to the guaranteed uptime. You want a high expectation that when someone attempts to visit your site that it will be available.

There are other things to consider. Do your research and get your hosting account in place. There are many good hosting companies; some that I recommend are HostGator, Ultimate Marketing Center, and Kiosk.

After you have selected your hosting company you need to transfer your domain name to the hosting company. You do this with the company that you purchased your domain name from.

3. Obtain a way to build your site(s).

This is easy it you know HTML. If you do not, then a good place to start is by obtaining a WYSIWYG editor. With this you can make changes to your pages without having to learn much HTML.

Even if you plan to make your main site a WordPress blog, you will still need to build web pages for things like squeeze pages, thank you pages, download pages, etc.

I recommend the following WYSIWYG editors:

Kompozer or CoffieCup HTML Editor

BTW, I would not recommend using Fantastico to install your blog. A blog build with Fantastico is much more susceptible to hackers. I would really recommend Expert WordPress as the best WordPress installer available.

4. Get an Autoresponder and setup a list.

One of the primary reasons that affiliate marketers have a website is to build a list(s). An autoresponder will be your primary tool for doing that. You will have to have one. It will provide the following functions and many others:

• Allows you to create mailing lists
• Manage your subscribers
• Aids in avoiding spam complaints
• Helps in testing and tracking results

You will find many companies that provide excellent autoresponder service. Select yours and learn how to use it. Become intimate with it. It will be your list building friend.

I personally recommend that you select Aweber or Ultimate Marketing Center. Many internet marketers like GetResponse as well.

With these 4 tools you are ready to start your list building journey and get your internet affiliate marketing business online into production. Your next tasks will be to learn how to use these tools to actual start the process. I see more work in your future.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, autoresponder, domain name, list building, web hosting, WYSIWYG editors

Your List Is Your Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever wonder why you should build a list? Why should you put forth all of that effort? You got into this business because affiliate marketing was said to be one of the best ways to make money online.

Now you find out that you will have to build a squeeze page. And by the way you will have to work to get visitors to that squeeze page. Don’t forget that you will also have to set up an autoresponder and send emails to your list and this will have to be done on a fairly regular basis.

You might be thinking by now that this is too much work. Then you find out that more work is required to get things set up so you can get customers. Just subscribers will not put money into your pocket. Also, you have to work on building a relationship with your subscribers so that they will someday become customers.

In addition, you will find that affiliate marketing is not an instantaneous, overnight happening. It’s going to take some time. So, will you be like many that start down this road and never do it or will you determine to stay the course?

Quitting before you even get start would be a mistake. Working hard to build your list is the most important thing that you can do in the internet/affiliate marketing business. I can say and I think that most if not all internet marketers will back me up; list building is one of the most profitable things you can do to build your business.

Here are four reasons why you should be building a good email list. (Aside from the fact that you probably won’t have an internet business if you don’t build a strong subscriber list.)

1. Lowers the cost of acquiring new customers.

Having a list of people that have become members of your list allows you to pre sell or make sales presentation to that group of subscribers over and over until some of them will buy. This subscriber/customer base will pay off over time. You can continue to mail them content and offers as you work on getting more subscribers to attempt to convert into customers.

2. Maximizes the profit.

 Building a list helps you to increase the profit that you obtain per customer. Not all of your subscribers will buy every time that you sent an offer. But a few buying each time you make a mailing means that over time you will maximize the profit you get per customer. So, you if you want more customers, build you list bigger.

 3. Participate in major launch events.

 Having a large list means that your opportunities to participate in major launches will increase. Have you ever noticed that when a large new product launch comes along many of the big guys are involved? All of a sudden for a few days you get emails from everyone that has a large list. By building your list your can be a part of the next big launch. The person launching the product might just seek you out as a JV partner to be an affiliate for his product.

 4. Test you copy.

 With a list of subscribers you can test your copy. Since you have a build in set of subscribers, you can send part of them one sales letter and another part a different sales letter. This will allow you to determine which one is more effective. This will give you a feel for your conversion rate. Knowing that you can approach JV partners and give them an idea of what they can expect if the help you promote your product. Also, it will help you to know what to expect if you decide to pursue paid promotions for your project.

 These are just four of many, many reasons why you should be building your list. As I implied above list building is one of the most profitable undertakings that you can pursue in your internet/affiliate marketing business. As was noted above having a list will help you to monetize your efforts and it will allow you to move into new partnership ventures.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, internet business, JV ventures, list building, product launch

Mike Paetzold and I am back again for day 2 of visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing affiliate marketing. Yesterday I started with what affiliate marketing is. Today I will talk about the tools you need to be an effective affiliate marketer.

Now lets cut out the crap from the beginning as you do need to spend some money to be an affiliate marketer despite what all the sales letters promise you.

Yes there are free resources and I use some of them but ultimately to get good results there are some tools you need to pay for. The key is to use paid products that have an affiliate program you can earn from so that you can earn your money back.

Do that with your tools and you can have the advantage of using better tools and doing it for free (eventually).

Here are the tools you should have as an affiliate marketer at a minimum.

• Your own domain
• A hosting account for your domain
• An autoresponder
• Tracking

The first two are important because a good affiliate marketer is always looking to build a list first and your domain and a hosting account will allow you to start monetizing that process through the three page web site system I discussed in my first stop.

With out your own hosting you lose that chance to monetize the process.

As list building should be your focus even as an affiliate marketer you will need a quality autoresponder too. This will allow you to stay in contact with your subscribers and build a relationship. Now you can send them to your favorite affiliate product more than once increasing the chance of you earning a commission significantly.

Finally you need to track your results and if you are not tracking what you are doing it is impossible to know what is working or not working so you can improve it.

Fortunately you can get a domain for less than $10 a year and the balance of what you need you need can be had in one package at The Marketers Hosting for $20 a month. (That even includes an affiliate program for when you create your own product but we will stick to affiliate marketing.

Now for traffic generation there are other items you will need depending on whether or not you are going to use paid or “free” traffic. Yes I put “free” in quotes on purpose, You know that didn’t you .

You will always pay for traffic either with your time or your money or both so there never really is free. Now as I do almost no PPC type traffic I won’t discuss that but there are a couple tools for free traffic that you should consider.

First is to add a blog to the hosting you already have, preferably a WordPress blog as they are quite easy to make into search engine magnets.

Second I would strongly recommend a web based article submission service like Content Crooner if you are going to use article marketing fro driving traffic (and you should.) The time savings using a service like this pays for itself over and over.

Now there are lots of other items you can use for traffic like Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc but they do not qualify as tools at least to this Old Bald Guy.

That’s all for today tomorrow we will talk about content marketing for affiliate marketing.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, autoresponder, build list, domain, web hosting

Establish An Online Income Stream With Affiliate Marketing

Have you noticed that the recession has hit many pretty hard and has impacted all of us in some way? Layoffs have increased and for other reasons people have lost their source of income. In short the economy at large is not doing too well. However, this has resulted in more and more people looking at affiliate marketing as a possible means to make money online.

This has resulted in a considerable gain for entrepreneurship and marketing. Would you like to establish an online income stream that helps you use online methods to make money and help provide some relief and keep you out of the red?

Traditional employers are tightening their belts and moving away from big pay packages. This make it difficult to find income in the standard employment channels. The answer just might be establishing an online business instead of looking to big business, or even a small offline business.

Over the last several years affiliate marketing has proven to be one of the most lucrative and powerful methods to make money online. With millions being spent every week, there are affiliate marketers out there who are not worried and who don’t face the stresses of a 9-5 day job.

Whether you’re looking forward to leaving your current position or just looking for a replacement income for your lost position, affiliate marketing is the answer that you’ve been waiting for.

Don’t worry — this isn’t a field that requires a marketing degree. Obviously some knowledge of internet marketing will have to be obtained. But, with the paid and free information that is available on the internet, through other internet marketers, there is no better time than right now to get started towards a future in affiliate marketing.

With just a small amount of research and time invested, you can be on your way toward a less stressful, more profitable future. This is possible – instead of focusing on the idea that it is not, focus on achieving your goals and cutting through the wrong information and start focusing on getting information that will put you in a position to establish your an online internet affiliate business.

This free report is the best place to look for

• beginners advice,
• fundamentals principles, and
• strategies

for maximizing your internet marketing capabilities.

 Whether you’re just starting out, an experienced affiliate internet marketer, or someone with lots of business experience, you’ll find some valuable information and advice within this free report.

Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

It’s not out of your reach, it is possible. If you want a stress-free online income, stand up, take action, and make it a reality. By using the simple techniques and strategies in this report, you can leave the stress of the rat race behind, maximize your lifestyle, and  start making money online with affiliate marketing.

Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

Click the image above and get started now.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, make money online, online income stream, recession

Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing Requires Action

Getting started in affiliate marketing is relative easy, but it requires action. That’s sort of what getting started implies. However, many people think that it’s going to be easier than it really is. Therefore, they are not prepared for all the action or steps that must be implemented. Consequently, they give up on affiliate marketing and the opportunity to make money online before they really even get started.

Basically all you need to do in order to join an affiliate program is to fill out a form. But that’s not even the beginning. You first have to do a lot of research to find your niche and then find an affiliate program in that niche.

You need to do your keyword research to find out where and if money is being spent in your market. Do some offline research. For instance, are people buying magazines in you niche. What you are doing is trying to find an area to work in that suits you and that is profitable and of course that takes action.

Once you find your niche and affiliate program you can fill out the form and join it. But you are still many action steps from being successful at affiliate marketing.

Study what your competition is doing. Then determine that you will follow through with your affiliate program. Statistics show that about 90% of the people that want to be involved in affiliate marketing and sign up for an affiliate program will never do anything to promote the program they signed up for. In other words, they will take no action at all.

Earlier I mentioned finding out what you competition is doing. But, don’t worry about them. Just concentrate on your own promotions and make your best effort to promote your affiliate program.

Once you’ve take action to select your niche, you are getting close to being ready to get started. However, there are several other things that you will need to have in place before you can actually start your business as an affiliate marketer.

Like any other business, you will need some tools and you will need the tools that are appropriate for affiliate marketing. Also, you will need to learn how to use those tools. This again will require action on your part. Are you starting to get the idea that this new venture will require work? It will.

Let’s look at some of the tools that your must have in order to get started. In this context, I am just going to enumerate some of them, not go into a discussion of what they are or how to use them – that will be action that you must take.

You don’t have to acquire these tools in this order, but you will need to acquire them.

1. An email account

2. An Autoresponder

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. A List of Resources

5. Word Processor/Text Editor

6. A domain name for your niche

7. A Website

8. A means of keeping up with such things as affiliate products, affiliate links, commissions earned, commissions paid, advertising campaigns, affiliate tracking, login information, etc.

9. And more as you proceed with you business.

Running an online business involves staying up with the internet as it evolves – witness Twitter. What’s next is anyone’s guess, but you need to take the necessary actions to stay current.

That brings up another thing that you will need – some assets. Some of these tools will cost money. There are free alternatives but in some cases you should not accept these. This is especially true in the case of your autoresponder. You need to make sure you get one that will constantly make all attempts necessary to insure a high delivery rate.

Some other things that you will need are:

• A web page or blog and the means to build these
• An FTP program to upload information to your web site or blog
• A reasonable good computer
• An internet connection
• A bookkeeping system to keep things straight for business and tax purposes
• A home office or other place to run your business
• And more

You should be able to see from just this introductory bit of information that you will have to take action, if you want to be successful with your affiliate marketing business. The end result of all this is that making money online requires action. No action, no business, no money.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate products, Getting started, keyword research, make money online, niche

3 Keys To Affiliate Marketing Success

Finding affiliates is a critical task for those that are in affiliate Internet marketing. Affiliates make money for you and drive traffic to you business. That is good for you, but another thing that it true for those that become affiliates is that affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and easiest ways to break into internet marketing and start making money online.

Being an affiliate means that you promote and send traffic to a product or products that someone else has created. The product owner provides you with a URL to the product and you develop your business by promoting that URL – referred to as an affiliate link. As an affiliate you receive a commission every time you make a sale from your affiliate link.

How do you insure that you can benefit or profit from being an affiliate? You have already benefitted in several ways by saving in your start up costs and efforts. You didn’t have to create your own product, develop your own sales page with graphics, or many other things.

You were able to start your business with all of these things already in place. Here are three keys to insure that your business as an affiliate becomes successful.

1. Product.

Selecting a product is a task you will have to pay a lot of attention to. And this has to be done well before you start thinking about a marketing campaign . It will require research and effort because you must choose the right product to promote. This is one of the first steps that you must take as an affiliate and it is essential to your future success.

During your research you will find hundreds of affiliate products over a wide range of topics that you could promote. Internet marketers call these niches. Your task is to find one that has a high probability that it will indeed help your business succeed.

You need to consider things like the amount of competition, are there keywords that people are searching for, is the sales page of good quality, do you like the product, would you buy it, can you work and establish yourself as a player in the existing market for the product.

You task is to find an affiliate product you can  actually sell.

2. Prospects.

Just having an affiliate product that you feel will sell does not insure that you will have a successful business. Your next task is just as important. You must start working on building a list of potential customers. You must not overlook this element of your affiliate marketing business.

It is a very big factor in your future. This list will be the people that will buy from your sales letter. As an affiliate marketer you will not be successful if you do not start and continue to build this list of prospects. One technique that has proven to be success in this list building effort is to start off your efforts by directing your traffic to a something that you offer for free.

By offering something for free you can get people to opt into your list. You are exchanging your free gift for their contact information. Once they are on your prospect list, you start to send them information. You use a squeeze page and an autoresponder to obtain these prospects and then you start a long term effort to build a relationship with your prospects  and you offer them additional value over time.

3. Promotion.

Once you have a list of prospects your task is to convert them into customers. Now you start your promotion efforts. This will continue as long as you remain in business and continue to have prospects on your list – you will constantly be adding to your list.

There are many wants to promote your affiliate link. One is to constantly use your autoresponder to send out follow up message that contain promotions for your affiliate product.

Another is to set up a blog. This may be one of the best methods that you can employ to  promote your affiliate products. You can write articles or posts as they are called to emphasize some aspect of you product. You could promote other products that fit with your niche. You can use your blog to link to several different affiliate products and promote all of them right on the blog.

There are more things that you will do over time. However, these three are important if you want to insure that your internet marketing efforts to promote affiliate products take you along a path that will bring you opportunities to make money online.

ToYour Online Success,

Lonnie Minton

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, internet Internet, make money online

List Building Is The Key To Internet Marketing Success

In internet marketing the essence or key to success is the list building, namely your list. You may have heard the same thing expressed by the now infamous saying, “The money is in the list.” Well, put that on your list of truths about internet marketing.

Suppose that you are involved with internet marketing and you have just developed a new product. Going a step further let’s say you are working with the sub niche of affiliate marketing and your new product is an affiliate program that you want to promote and that you want affiliates to promote.

How are you going to do that? The only way you can promote it is to tell someone about your new affiliate product. That someone is your list. There are all kinds of lists that you can use. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

1. Affiliate List.

In the case referenced above, you would likely turn to your list of affiliates first, if you have any. That is, people who have joined your affiliate program and promoted some of your affiliate products before. A benefit here is that they in turn have lists of their own that they can promote your affiliate product to. So you benefit from their list as well.

2. Joint Venture (JV) list

Another list is what is called a Joint Venture (JV) list. Giveaways are currently strong in this area. You will see a lot of advertising that says something like, “A new JV program is launching.” In all likelihood, it will be a giveaway promotion.

The idea in this type of list building is to leverage off of the lists of others to build your own list. Each JV partner that joins the giveaway has a list also. He advertises the giveaway to his list and the giveaway grows and more JV partners advertise it to their list. You hope that many of the people on the JV partner’s lists will see your giveaway item and sign up for it and thus be added to your list.

3 Your own opt-in list

This is the list that you want to build as large as possible. Each person on this list is someone that has subscribed in some way to your newsletter or free offer and opted-in to receive emails from you.

So, you could send your new affiliate program to your own list. Some of your subscribers will open your email and buy your affiliate program. Some will also promote your affiliate program to their list and that will increase your sales even more.

4. Twitter list

Let’s go modern a bit and look at Twitter. In Twitter your list is called your followers. In any case they are just a group of people that you can send messages to. These messages are called tweets.

But it is still a list of people that you have the opportunity to promote your products to. Here the key is to use your Twitter list in such a way as to get some of your Twitter followers onto your opt-in list. Here is a great way to build your list of Twitter followers.

5. Buyer’s list

Some will go so far as to say that you don’t want to build a list of subscribers and that the money is not in the list. They advocate that you should build a list of buyers.
However, that is just a list that has been leveraged to become buyers.

The fact that they have bought is a good indication that they will likely buy again. But it is still a list.

6. Buy a list

You will even see people trying to purchase a list. But don’t go that route. You will get into the spamming world quick.

7. Email swap list

Here you team up with someone else to leverage his list to build your list. At the same time he uses your list to build his list. In essence you advertise your newsletter to his list in the hope that some of the people on his list will subscribe to your list.

At the same time he advertises his list to your list; hoping that some of your subscribers will also subscribe to his list.

Regardless of the name you give to it, building your list is the name of the game with internal marketing. It is so important that nearly every one that tries to coach you in the internet marketing arena will take you down the list building road.

In truth you cannot market a product in the internet marketing world without a list. You have to have someone to tell about your product or you will not have anyone buy your product. So it is imperative that you start building your list now.

You may use safelists, Traffic exchanges lists, JV partner’s lists, Twitter followers, someone else’s list, social marketing 2.0 lists, email swap lists, etc. Any of these lists may prove successful. But, that success will be measured in terms of getting people onto your own list because that is where the real success is.

All of these Internet marketing techniques are geared toward the same end – list building.  All of these and more are used by internet marketers because the money is in the list. And by any name, the objective is to build a list of people that you can market your products to.

To Your Online Success,

Lonnie Minton

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate program, internet marketing, joint venture, list building, Twitter